Even just a decade ago, it was pretty common to have a lot of action films stars, but the landscape has changed and the biz hasn’t really nurtured or pushed new action stars ready to take place of the old guard, which has mostly retired due to health, simply aging closer to triple digits, or if it has recognizeable “young” actors, the popcorn action flicks have just moved to streaming services.
So in a way there’s some strange comfort in seeing Jason Staham films still being a yearly thing in cinemas, delivering a violent action film that straddles the line between somewhat realistic and over the top, with a plot as an excuse for Jason Staham’s character de jour to get revenge on criminals, surprising everyone (but the audience) that this unassuming man was actually an ex-military with years of experience or whatever.
in Mutiny he plays an ex-soldier turned bodyguard for a naval delivery company, which sneaks aboard a merchant ship of another company, as it had ambushed him in a shoot-out, killed his boss and framed him, but he’ll also have to help a new third officer, whom discovers the secret cargo they were actually carrying…
Like most of these, it’s nothing special but to be honest i feel they’re getting a bit worse later, The Beekeeper was quite decent, and even A Working Man was more fun.
Mutiny does the job, it doesn’t overstay its welcome, being barely above 90 minutes long, it gives what you expect and want from a Jason Staham film, the violent action setpieces, but this time around it takes longer than usual to get around to those, the plot seems more complex than it actually is, so it doesn’t even need extra time to “unravel”, and even Staham feels almost in autopilot.
Wise Cafe (International) 